Scan barcode
A review by pushingdessy
The Secret Summer Promise by Keah Brown
inspiring
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This is a diverse friends-to-lovers romance with disability representation. I discovered it through a rec list of books with main characters with cerebral palsy. Since I haven’t read many books with disability rep written by own voices and this had a cute premise, I picked it as one of my summer reads.
📝 The MC is Andrea Williams, a 17-year-old girl planning The Best Summer Ever with her BFF Hailee after spending the previous summer recovering from surgery. But there’s a secret item in their list: Andrea must fall out of love with Hailee, as their friendship is too important to mess up.
🙌 The good: This is really a very diverse book, featuring Black, Chinese-American and Latine characters, a wide spectrum of queerness, and disability. Most of the parents (and the other adults, too) are depicted as close-knit, loving and supportive of their kids. I appreciated the resolution of Andrea and Olivia’s relationship. Most of all, I loved reading a story from the POV of a teenager with a disability and how that impacts the way she moves in the world, and I loved that she had a tight support system to help with what she needed, when she needed it.
😐 The eh: The characters are supposed to be 17, but they sounded and acted a lot younger. For some reason, everybody burst into singing in the middle of conversations. The miscommunication was exaggerated imo, and the narration sometimes went step by step with what the characters were doing, unnecessarily. Overall, the writing
📝 The MC is Andrea Williams, a 17-year-old girl planning The Best Summer Ever with her BFF Hailee after spending the previous summer recovering from surgery. But there’s a secret item in their list: Andrea must fall out of love with Hailee, as their friendship is too important to mess up.
🙌 The good: This is really a very diverse book, featuring Black, Chinese-American and Latine characters, a wide spectrum of queerness, and disability. Most of the parents (and the other adults, too) are depicted as close-knit, loving and supportive of their kids. I appreciated the resolution of Andrea and Olivia’s relationship. Most of all, I loved reading a story from the POV of a teenager with a disability and how that impacts the way she moves in the world, and I loved that she had a tight support system to help with what she needed, when she needed it.
😐 The eh: The characters are supposed to be 17, but they sounded and acted a lot younger. For some reason, everybody burst into singing in the middle of conversations. The miscommunication was exaggerated imo, and the narration sometimes went step by step with what the characters were doing, unnecessarily. Overall, the writing